Gut Microbiome and Cancer: The Next Frontier in Research

By City of Hope

A City of Hope scientific symposium brought together preeminent scientists and federal health officials to discuss the significant and far-reaching role the gut microbiome could play in cancer prevention and treatment.

Trillions of microbes, invisible to the eye and teeming inside the gut, are now having a moment.

Some are calling it a moonshot moment.

A growing body of research suggests this vast ecosystem may be critical to understanding cancer — how it develops, how the immune system reacts, and why some patients respond to therapies while others do not.

That idea drew a rare convergence of federal health leaders, cancer center executives, and leading scientists to City of Hope, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, in May, for a scientific symposium called “The Next Frontier of Cancer Prevention and Care: The Microbiome.”

By the end of the symposium, the microbiome was being discussed not simply as a research topic, but also as one of the next major priorities in cancer prevention, treatment, and care.

“If we do this well, if we bring the same level of collaboration, focus, and urgency that has defined the greatest achievements in cancer, then the microbiome will represent the next chapter in how we attack cancer and in turn change the world for people,” said Robert Stone, City of Hope CEO and the Helen and Morgan Chu Chief Executive Officer Distinguished Chair.

That sense of urgency extended beyond the scientific community.

“I want to open the door so that we understand much more about the microbiome in three years than we have in all the years leading up to now,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). “I want to make it a moonshot. I think it's so critical for American health.”

Who attended the microbiome symposium: Leading researchers and executives from City of Hope, the National Cancer Institute, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Fred Hutch Cancer Center gathered with government officials including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D.

Experts who presented in the symposium say the gut microbiome may become a central factor in cancer prevention, treatment response and patient outcomes.

Why the gut: The human body hosts trillions of tiny microbes that, for the most part, live symbiotically in our nose, lungs, digestive tract, and other organs. In recent years, the microbiome, as these communities are collectively called, has gained attention as a potential mediator of a wide range of health conditions.

An emerging consensus among researchers is that the gut microbiome is not just a peripheral community of organisms. In fact, it’s now being reframed as an organ system that should be evaluated alongside other major considerations such as cardiac, pulmonary, and renal function. Many recent studies have shown that the gut microbiome can have a direct impact on cancer treatment efficacy and toxicity.

"The microbiome is a relevant organ that we need to know about if we want to do the best for our patients," said Marcel van den Brink, M.D., Ph.D., president of City of Hope National Medical Center and a nationally recognized leader in microbiome research. "Incorporating that in our way of thinking when we analyze a patient for a therapy or for having cancer – that would be a big step forward.”

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